TB patient in health scare released from hospital

Posted: Friday, July 27, 2007

DENVER - The tuberculosis patient who created an international health scare when he flew to Europe for his wedding was released from a hospital Thursday after successfully completing inpatient treatment, officials said.

Andrew Speaker, an Atlanta attorney who had a multidrug-resistant strain of TB, underwent surgery on July 17 to remove part of his lung.

The doctors who treated him at National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver don't consider him to be completely cured, but the lung operation and antibiotic treatments "have eliminated any detectable evidence of infection," the hospital said.

Speaker, who spent eight weeks in the hospital, still will need to continue antibiotic treatment for about two years.

Hospital spokesman William Allstetter said Thursday that Speaker had left Denver in an air ambulance with his wife and daughter and returned to Georgia to recuperate. He would not specify where except to say that Speaker was not in a hospital.

"He arrived there safely and he is happy to be home," Allstetter said.

Speaker, reached by telephone Thursday, declined comment.

Allstetter said Speaker, who is no longer under an isolation order, was instructed to check in with county health officials in Georgia, but he declined to identify the county.

Georgia officials said Speaker's treatment would be overseen by authorities in Hall County, along with state officials.

As with other TB patients, a health worker must watch Speaker take his drugs to make sure he stays on the five-days-a-week regimen, Allstetter said. Speaker will not have to wear a mask.

Federal health officials say they worked with National Jewish to develop a plan to monitor Speaker's treatment in Georgia, said Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Speaker is not contagious and could have flown by commercial airliner, Allstetter said. But Speaker, his doctors and local health officials in Georgia agreed the air ambulance was a better choice because of the attention the case has attracted, Allstetter said.

Speaker became the focus of a federal investigation and prompted an international uproar in May when he went ahead with the wedding trip after health officials said they had advised him not to fly. Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notified him while he was there that tests indicated he had extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis; later tests found only the less dangerous multidrug-resistant TB.

He flew to Canada against the CDC's request, drove across the border and turned himself in at a U.S. hospital. For a few days, he held the designation as the first American quarantined by the federal government since 1963. He was transferred to National Jewish on May 31.

Nearly all of the U.S. passengers who were with Speaker on a May 12 flight from Atlanta to Paris have been contacted, and preliminary tests found no sign they were infected. However, not all of those passengers have gone back for the necessary follow-up tests that would provide conclusive results, Skinner said.

Doctors said patients normally would spend three to four weeks in the hospital after undergoing the lung operation Speaker had. But Dr. Gwen Huitt said Speaker recovered quickly because he was young, his TB was caught early and he was in good health otherwise.